- August 05, 2026
- By Tom Ventsias
Making autonomous drones safer. Measuring how people express trust in AI. Helping local governments navigate AI policy.
Those are among the ambitions driving five new research projects selected for the fourth round of seed funding from the Institute for Trustworthy AI in Law & Society (TRAILS), a four-university consortium led by the University of Maryland.
The institute awarded just over $515,000 to multidisciplinary teams from UMD, George Washington University, Morgan State University and Cornell University. The grants, ranging from $40,000 to $160,000, are designed to launch new collaborations, generate preliminary results and position investigators to compete for larger external funding.
Supported by a $20 million award from the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, TRAILS brings together researchers with expertise in disciplines that include computer science, engineering, law, public policy and the social sciences. Collectively, they are examining one of AI’s biggest challenges: ensuring that AI -infused systems are not only technically capable, but accountable and aligned with society’s needs.
The latest round of seed projects explore not only how AI systems work, but also how people use them, how institutions deploy them and how trust is built over time.
“TRAILS is uniquely positioned to connect AI innovation with governance, accountability and public trust at a national scale,” said Hal Daumé III, director of TRAILS and a professor of computer science at the University of Maryland. “Over the past few years, we've moved the conversation beyond model accuracy alone to examine how AI systems perform in real-world human, institutional and societal contexts.”
Daumé, in addition to his leadership of TRAILS, is the director of the Artificial Intelligence Interdisciplinary Institute at Maryland (AIM), which brings together AI experts across the UMD campus to focus on responsible, ethical development and use of the technology to advance public good in industry, government and society.
That commitment to responsible, interdisciplinary AI research is reflected in TRAILS’ latest round of seed-funded projects.
“We're continuing to transition from cutting-edge research and scholarship to research with significant impact,” said David Broniatowski, deputy director of TRAILS and a professor of engineering management and systems engineering at George Washington University (GWU). “These projects are designed to grow beyond TRAILS through new partnerships and external support.”
Rebuilding Trust After AI Failures
Broniatowski and Cornell psychology Professor Valerie Reyna will investigate why people often respond differently to the same AI success or failure. Drawing on reports from the AI Incident Database, the team will examine how people’s values shape their perceptions of AI risks, responsibility and accountability, and whether meaningful explanations tailored to different worldviews are more effective than detailed technical information alone at rebuilding public trust.
Training the Next Public Health Workforce
Morgan State public and allied health Assistant Professor Robin Butler and industrial and system engineering Assistant Professor Vishnu Kumar, together with the UMD Assistant Clinical Professor Hassanatu Blake of the Department of Global, Environmental, and Occupational Health, will study how participatory learning influences AI literacy and trust by developing a four-course Certificate in Responsible Public Health AI. Students will help design the curriculum alongside faculty and public health professionals, creating educational resources that emphasize explainability, fairness and accountability while preparing a more diverse workforce to responsibly deploy AI.
Reading Trust Through Language
UMD College of Information Assistant Professor Julia Mendelsohn and UMD Maryland Language Science Center Assistant Research Professor Charlotte Vaughn will explore how people express trust in AI through everyday conversation. Using computational linguistics to analyze open-ended survey responses, the researchers will identify patterns in how people communicate confidence, uncertainty and concern about AI, creating new tools for measuring public trust across diverse communities.
Safer AI for Autonomous Drones
Two GWU researchers, electrical and computer engineering Assistant Professor Nan Wu and mechanical and aerospace engineering Professor Peng Wei, will develop lightweight AI systems that enable autonomous drones to earn users’ trust by making safer predictions in unpredictable urban environments. The project will improve the reliability of vision-language models by reducing decision delays, strengthening performance under challenging conditions and validating the technology through high-fidelity simulations of hazards such as changing light, unexpected obstacles and other real-world conditions.
Helping Local Governments Govern AI
GWU public policy Research Professor Joseph Dunne and two UMD College of Information members, Professor Katie Shilton and Postdoctoral Researcher Jwan Khisro, will examine how local governments translate broad AI principles into everyday practice. Through case studies in Maryland and Washington, D.C., the researchers will explore how public officials define trustworthy AI, incorporate public participation into implementation decisions and navigate accountability challenges, producing practical guidance for cities and counties nationwide adopting AI technologies.